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COPYRIGHT DEPOSnv 



The Great Adventurer 

By J. E. Sampter 



New York 
Robert Kerr Press 
Two East Twenty Ninth Street 

MCMIX 



Two Gop:es Re<.<rived 

OEC 12 1908 I 

cuss CC- KXc, v-j 



Copyright, 1908, by 
J. E. Sampteb 






• A 



5. 



To 
J. L 



The Face of Lite 



The Face of Life 
I 

THE face of man passes like a shadow and a dream. 
The face of man is like a cloud that glimmers and 
passes from the sky. 
It is Uke a cloud on fire with sunlight, a vapor, a frail 
and accidental and surpassingly beautiful vision. 
A man and a woman went forth by moonlight; they 
knew the planetary forces; they loved, they hved 
a rapturous moment of Ufe; and, lo, there glim- 
mered the face of a new man. 
A troop of soldiers rushed through a town, and stole 
its fairest daughter, and stupefied her and misused 



her; and, Jo, there glimmered the face of a new man. 
A thoughtless couple was thoughtlessly united, for con- 

venience and through the bahbling force of many 

tongues ; and, lo, there glimmered the face of a new 

man. 
Like bubbles upon water, like clouds shaped by the 

wind, so shadowlike and accidental is a human face. 
Behold, this woman wept, and there came forth a dark 

face upon the world. 
And behold, that woman laughed, and there came forth 

a face that shone like the morning. 
And she that wept and she that laughed were but as 

clouds shining and darkling in the radiance of a 

fearful sun. 



II 

MY birth was an adventure. 
No perilous voyage was so perilous, so strange, 
so seemingly fabulous as my voyage to the 
shores of life. 
That Columbus reached America is not marvelous. 
That Balboa looked upon the Pacific was at last inevit- 
able. 
But that I reached the shores of life is a great wonder. 
Could I tell the mysteries and terrors I have seen upon 
my voyage toward life, no man would believe me. 
And yet everyone of those who would doubt has 
traveled as mysterious and terrible a sea. 
Eternity has been on this adventure with me; even a$ 



eternity has been on its adventure with every mb- 

mentary little cloud. 
Accidents have swayed my course, poles have drawn 

me as if I were a magnet, ships have collided with 

me, and they sank, not I. No special fate watched 

over me. The course of all things carried me to 

my goal. 
An adventure was my birth. An adventure, as perilous, 

as strange, as seemingly fabulous, shall be my life 

and death. 



Ill 



WAS it inevitable that this earth became a solid 
ball? 

Was not that likewise a seeming chance of 
nature, an event dependent on every delicate force 
and balance of a multitude of stars? 
And yet this I needed for my voyage. 
I needed seas and continents, seas that are vap')rous 
still, continents that are as creases upon a harden- 
ing ball of fire and granite. 
I needed the little worm that is my grandfather, the 

little plant that is my foster-mother. 
I needed the horrible struggles of creatures fighting for 
life. I needed the sharper claws of one creature, 



or the keener, crueler wit of another creature. 
For he of the sharper claws and the crueler wit was 

the father of my fathers. 
Behold, mountains were moved to let me pass. Behold, 

men and women labored and loved and died, — 

just as they did, and not otherwise — or else had 

I not breathed. 
Had not a million mothers suffered the throes of agony, 

I could not sing to-day my songs of triumph. 
Once fire is always fire. What was once a nebulous 

flame upon this earth is now the lamp of my spirit 

and the fire of my tongue. 



IV 



I PUT a question to life, and life gave me an answer. 
I reasoned therefrom, and asked the same question 
again. But it is another matter whether I am to 
receive the same answer. 

I live upon a promise. In winter I live upon the promise 
of spring, and in spring I live upon the promise of 
autimin. Forever am I like a mother expecting the 
birth of her first child ; forever like a bride awaiting 
the bridegroom. But I may die before night. 

Is it all promise? Is nothing to be fulfilled? Am I 
like a querulous child to be quieted with false prom- 
ises? 



Is it to keep me from starving that you fill me with 
promises of bread? 

Woe to me, I have missed the fulfillment! I did not 
see it. 

While I was awaiting spring my window was brilliant 
with roses of frost and lilies of ice. While I was 
awaiting autumn the cherries were already ripe 
upon the trees. Behold, she who was awaiting her 
first child had him already in the stillness, closer 
than ever again. Behold, the bride awaiting her 
bridegroom hears his voice singing into her ears. 

Though the mother and bride die before night, yet are 
they no less mother and bride. 

Outward fulfillment is the visible fulfillment which our 
spirit has already passed, is the husk ripened to fall 



away. Within it is a new promise, again invisible. 
The true fulfillment is the promise. 
The fairest flower is that within the bud, still folded, 

still perfect, still invisible. 
How beautiful are the means of life! Hear men cry: 

"The end justifies the means." 
I say to you: "The means justify the end.'* Let ends 

take care of themselves. I cannot alter them. My 

power is in the means, my fairness lies in making 

the means fair, my delight lies in making the means 

delightful. 
Mine only is this endless present, with its vision of the 

past and future. 
Most delightful of all present things, most living and 

nearest to my soul, is just its promise of the future. 



Do you hear out of the future years the sweet trem- 
ulous voices of many unborn children? As the 
dream and foreboding of next summer's singing 
birds, so come to me from the future their lisping 
songs and their playful high chatter and their soft 
waihngs. 
They are the children that may be born. They are the 

children that perhaps shall never be born. 
What a chance it is, what a speculation on our moods 
and humors whether they shall ever sing and lisji 
and wail ! They are indeed on a perilous adventure. 
Generations of unborn children, generations of unborn 
fathers and mothers, fear not, despair not of birth, 



for in one way or another your voices shall be heard; 

they are heard already. 
For the generations of unborn children are our children. 

In our spirits they are singing already. 
You are as inevitable as I have been, and every one of 

you shall be born. 
Sweet children, your voices shall be heard, though none 

should be able to see you. 
For the power that is in a man must go forward and 

ripen in season ; and if it cannot bear physical fruit, 

it shall bear spiritual fruit. 
Every man is a spring of the waters of life. The force 

that is in him must pass onward, like the water 

that is pouring from the mountains. Through the 

calm, broad river or the seething narrow chasm, 



in clouds or spray or cataract or subterranean 
stream, it must pour down to the sea. So the force 
of man, through body or spirit, through good or 
evil, pours down through the ages. AVhere there 
is room and passageway his children shall pass. 
One is the father of heroes and another is the father 
of prophecies. 
Evil thoughts and dark ambitions, terrible creeds, sweet 
songs, truths of science and conventions of life, all 
these spiritual influences that are living among us 
and are stronger than the strongest men, what do 
you think they are? The spiritual children of men 
and women who lived generations ago. 



o 



VI 



STARS and planets, if you have been inevitable, 
so too have I, so too have all my brothers, the 
teeming multiform children of life, been just 
as inevitable. The force of all things in the uni- 
verse, the balance of every star, the weight of every 
pebble, all, all, with not one grain of dust left out, 
bring forth by their vast workings and strugglings 
and inconsequent strong wills, the world as it is, the 
world as it must be. The whole of life, within itself, 
now, is the whole past and the whole future. Each 
moment is eternity. And only that whole life, that 
vast completeness, comprehends every moment of 
the past and future, of all time. In that whole I am 



forever. From that whole I cannot be cast away. 

That on which I have moored my hfe may be swept 
from me by some vast current of antagonistic 
purpose. Like a barnacle fastened to a ship's side, 
I am forever fastened to something ; like a barnacle, 
no matter where the ship may sail, there am I at 
home. But, lo, they scrape me from the ship. 
Then begins a new struggle and adventure. 

For me this separate adventure, for me this part, for 
me only this vision of the face of life. 



Into the Depths 



Into the Depths 

I 

IHE AR a voice, and I know my friend is near me. I 
behold a face, and I know it is the face of one I 
love. Shall I hear the voice of life, and see the 
face of hfe, and not believe that hfe is there? 
I behold a green hill, and I believe that the upheaved 
rock is beneath it; I see the surface of a lake, and 
I beheve there is a depth below. Such is my faith. 
I behold the surface and believe in the depth. 



II 

HAVE I ever doubted you, my brother, my lim- 
ited, human, dear brother? Have I ever said: 
"Perhaps the face and the shape is all of you. 
Perhaps your seeming self is a picture"? No,* but 
I have lived upon the sure knowledge of you, of 
your self. 
When I was a baby, I looked into my mother's eyes, 
and saw my like, and had no fear. And when I 
looked later upon the flowers and stars and clouds, 
I looked into their eyes, and saw my like again, 
and had no fear. 
And now, after long thought and experience, I know 
what it is that makes me love and trust you so well, 



my human brother. It is the knowledge of the 
self within me that makes me love, that makes me 
trust the self in you. 

If the voice of creation were to speak to me, saying, 
*'I am," I could not understand the word unless it 
were spoken within myself, unless I myself experi- 
enced the universe. 

My life is meaningless save for the self that creates and 
breathes therein. This alone is sure, is light, life 
and form. This is the great adventurer to whom all 
passing things are food and drink and treasure and 
an open path. And all that mystifies me, the won- 
derful unknown, is meaningless until I find therein 
the self that is more than myself, and yet that I 
myself must realize. I feel the universe as a self, 



a myriad of selves in endless relation, that clash 
and seem to destroy one another, and know not 
that they are the same, even as the waves of the sea. 
I am a wave of the sea. I have come up from the 
depths, I shall go back to the depths ; and my quick 
and fleeting life is this sparkle and curve and swift 
shape of a wave in the sunshine. But I am one 
with that boundless, multitudinous sea, with that 
whole existence, that prolific self, which is also 
within me, the upwelling of my own life — not 
thought or passion or feeling — but that which looks 
out and adventures through them all. 
To myself I am the revealer of life, because I am alive. 
Life is the one certainty. And yet life is the one 
unknown. I learn more and more, but the mystery 



grows no less. The flame makes all shapes clear 
but its own shape. It illumines all things, but 
knows not itself to be the light. 



w 



III 



HEN I, hungering and incomplete, I who need 
the whole world, who move therein as in a 
socket, 1 w ho teed on stars and seas and prairies 
and jungles, 1 who die each day and am born each 
day in the body, and yet shape myself ever accord- 
ing to my need and my spuit, when I doubt and 
question the self in hfe, the self that surrounds and 
f ultills me, I tind myself suddenly in a world of 
dreams and pictures. When 1 doubt you, my hu- 
man brother, 1 half slay myself. And when 1 doubt 
the self, the vital source of all hfe, I am shut out 
from my body and garden and vast shape, the uni- 
verse. I can travel no more. My seas are dried up. 



and my mountains are shattered, and I am coffined 
in the narrow bounds of my own shape. 
For all shape is a dream and a vision and a picture; a 
dream and a vision and a picture of the unseen 
self. And out of my heart cries the love that is a 
proof of my incompleteness. 



IV 



IF life is a sign, what is signified? If life is a dream, 
who is the dreamer? If life is a shadow, what is 
the substance? 
I am the sign and the signified; I am the dream and 
the dreamer; I am the shadow and the substance. 
I myself am the answer. 



V 



THE fruit of reason, no less than the fruit of feeling, 
is faith. In one age men get for their questions 
this answer : Jehovah ; in another age this answer : 
Christ; in a third age, this answer: Nature. Each 
is an act of faith. 
Different are the fruits of reason and feeling for each 

man. But their root is one. 
Though the scientist believe that lightning is an electric 
flash, and the savage believe that it is a sign of the 
anger of gods, and though both may be wrong, 
yet both have seen and known the flash of lightning. 
Every man who knows the wonder of life within liim, 
and finds expression, however crude or false, knows 



the truth. Though he clothe his body of truth in 
rags or silk, in feathers or paint, that body is still 
the same. His act of faith is a living thing; his 
form of faith is a dress. 



VI 



So far as man can know, nothing is ever destroyed; 
existence is change; change is eternal. 

I am eternal; I am forever. But I am infinitely 

mortal. 
I am born forever, I die forever, I am changed forever; 

I know not what I may become, nor what I may 

have been. 
According to the strength that is within me, for this 

eternal point of time that is called the present, I 

am free. I am a magnet and a blast of wind. 
Each one of us is so much : A part of our whole selves, 

a part of all force, a part of all hfe and freedom. 

The whole of self is the universe. 



Even as the present moment Is a part of eternity, and, 
in a certain sense, is eternity itself. 



VII 



I HAVE come upward from the darkness of my baby 
soul, which knew all things darkly. 
And I would grow to include the seas and earth and 
heaven and all things, till the stars and planets and 
man among them should sing together in a univer- 
sal light. 

My love is a great love. My longing is without end. 

And to-day in its human shape it needs and wills all that 
is human. It sees itself as a part of the great 
human drama, as one among many, who are all 
me, mine; who shall live in relation to my will. 

I shall shape and mold the lives about me, according 



to my might, not for my limited pleasure or satis- 
faction, but for my vision of that humanity. 

I shall go beyond my pain and beyond my joy. As 
notes forget themselves in 4 melody, so shall I 
forget myself in the larger fullness of that human 
chant. Pain shall not affright me, where there is 
growth and adventure and love. I shall make life 
sweet and rhythmic where I can touch it, to be my 
life and my perfection. 

I shall want life fair and open and true; and I shall be 
as one who looks down upon myself, and sees my 
own human shape and passage of hfe as part of a 
large drama of myself. I shall shape my life to 
fit into that drama of beauty as I long for it, just 
as I might wish to shape the life of another. 



And so shall I be complete according to my light, by 
living in and for all that I know and understand. 

For all that I love and know is a part of me, and my 
completeness. 



VIU 

I KNOW not why or how I was separated from the 
world, but I know that my longing is to be united 
once more. Am I not, even now, united ? I believe 
that now, in this life, if anywhere, that union should 
be realized. 
This one experience called human life and human death 
can be lived and died in the spirit of a world, in 
manifold adjustment with all other worlds. Like 
a planet or star in the vast system I shall feel and 
know every vibration from all space and time. The 
universe shall be myself, and in that perfection 
alone shall I be perfect ; in relation to the vast plan 
shall I move and be myself. And yet like a world, 



with its attraction, shall I attract and sway all 
things, shall I keep myself whole and strong, a 
force among the forces of life. I shall be so poised, 
so centred, that I shall touch life at every point, 
and hold it and shape it with my will. 



IX 



SOME are sculptors of marble and some are casters 
of bronze and some are molders of wax. The great 
art-master has given each of us a different material. 
We cannot choose. But each of us is free to choose 
and create a form of beauty, according to his own 
light, and each of us knows that the form shall be 
destroyed again and again, and melted for new uses. 

However we plan and work, unconsciously we are mak- 
ing images of our self. And because our self is 
forever changing, therefore does each image, as soon 
as it is finished, become a false image, to be recast. 

Some lose with sorrow their beautiful images; some, 
though they conceive beauty, cannot stamp it upon 



the face of their mold ; some behold with horror that 
they have conceived and wrought ugliness and 
falsehood. 
But ever the sculptor remains, and ever the great art- 
master brings new and strange substances. 



MY great art-master is my creative spirit. It is 
stern, it is single-minded ; it bids me waste noth- 
ing and withhold nothing. 
If I defied this master spirit, I were like a planet that 
lost its strength of gravity, and divided into a 
thousand insufficient and uncertain particles. 
Till death divide me, while I stand thus crystallized in 
the shape of human life, I would have my will and 
purpose as single, as individual, as separate as the 
shape that is my body. 
Daring, self-contained and free is this warm body in its 
world of fluid shapes. It shall be cold. It shall 
crumble. It shall plunge into the terrible sea of 



boundless re-creation. And I am that body, I am 
that life, one with all others through endless inter- 
change. Each smallest shape is universal because 
it is related with all energies forever. I am the 
strong master of myself, the zenith of my own life. 
And yet I am nobly and magnificently dependent, 
the child and lover of my vast self through life 
and through death. I am myself because I am 
much more than myself. I am myself because I 
lose myself forever. One law spreads out the oceans 
and holds the drop of water in its perfect globe, 
will to live intact. Through life and into death I 
shall follow my particular, finite, splendid love, 
without fear or sight, as a planet or star follows 
its unseen course in the track of its own will. I 



shall devote myself to my course, to my chosen path 
of life. My whole soul, my whole life and will to 
this adventure, while it lasts, and to the next ad- 
venture, if it come! I shall give myself wholly, 
or withhold myself wholly. I shall not choose that 
which will let me hve, but live or die for that which 
I choose. 
For my creative spirit is a child of the vast world. It 
knows that infinite circles sweep onward in strong 
and definite lines. 



XI 



SHIP of life, I am dizzy, dancing over the waves. 
Now on the crest of one, I pray to stay there, to 

reel forever on that sunny, life-giving height. Now 

in the hollow of one, I pray to sink to the very 

depths. 
There, surely, in the stillness, in the depths, are no more 

dizzy changes, no motion, nothing but changeless- 

ness and dead calm. 
But from the shore and the continents I hear jagged 

mountain-tops crying aloud. 
They cry: "We were once in the deepest depths of the 

sea. Behold, how we have risen! Nowhere is 

changelessness ; nowhere is dead calm." 



I know a deeper depth and a higher height. I know 
a depth that is not reached by sinldng. I know a 
height that is not reached by rising. 

It is the innermost self, the one known, the one un- 
knowable. 



F 



XII 

ACE of man, nearest face, just awakened, splen- 
did, changing, dying face, you cannot hide from 
me the self that I know. Through the changing 
cloud, through the shifting wave, through the pass- 
ing face I recognize myself. 



XIII 

BEHIND me is darkness, before me is a deep pit. 
I plunge into the night, as I have done forever. 
And lo, about me is the radiance of my own 
light. The darkness is my friend, the night is my 
mother. I lean upon empty space; I step smiling 
into the darkness. For do not the planets and stars 
lean upon empty space? And does not darkness 
spread forth their fire? 
I love the fearful world. I trust the unknown, because 
it is the whole of myself. The space holds me; and 
the darkness spreads a great hght. For this is the 
bottomless pit and the roofless heaven, and in it I 
am forever. 



1908 



